Phuket Island (Part 2)
(Part 1)

This page tries to give you some impression of the Island of Phuket.
It is a very touristic island, as you will see. Nevertheless it has some quiet and interesting spots. Please judge for yourself!

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Making a car tour around the island of Phuket gives you some wonderful views. Here, for instance, you see three good beaches. From top to bottom: Karon Beach, Kata Yai Beach and Kata Noi Beach. On the right hand side picture above you see an enlarged view of the latter two beaches.

And before we move to Patong Beach, I want to show you why I do not like the village of Patong. I hope that the above pictures speak for themselves, because they show the reason. (Almost) the whole village looks like the above two pictures.
Crowded, touristic and expensive. These three words quite well describe Patong. Nevertheless you may differ in opinion with me. Maybe you like the village of Patong!

Whatever I just said of the village of Patong, does not go for the beach. Strangely enough the beach is (much) more quiet than you would expect, after having looked at the two pictures of the village. And the view of the hills surrounding the beach is quite attractive. You can even have a good (traditional) Thai massage on the beach, as the right hand picture shows!

Some sights on Phuket Island

Wat Phra Thong

"Wat Phra Thong" means "Temple of the Golden Buddha". The Golden Buddha of Phuket has an interesting as well as a strange story: According to that story a boy, who wanted to fasten his water buffalo, found something pointing out of the ground and fastened his buffalo to it. Soon afterwards the boy died. His father had a dream, that digging out the metal object, would explain the cause of the death of his son. He started digging and found out that the object, pointing out of the ground, was the top of a Buddha Image. He was not able to dig further than halfway, though. He decided to have a Temple built around the Golden Buddha Image. After the Burmese had occupied Thailand, they tried to excavate the Buddha Image further, but they failed as well. The two photographs above tell the story (legend?) of the boy. You find this "pictorization" of the story next to the gate of Wat Phra Thong.

The Buddha Image is now covered with cement and painted gold. Some years ago I was still able to see it as it was originally: gold (or at least gold plated..).

When I see something like this, I always wonder who makes decisions like this (that changes the appearance of a beautiful Buddha Image) in Thailand.
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On my introductory Thailand pages I show you a beautiful Buddha Image in Wat Bupparam in Chiang Mai. When I visited this teak wooden Buddha for the first time, it had an intense deep, almost black color. And this deep black color looked very much as if it was the original color of the wood. It was stunningly beautiful.
The next time I visited it, somebody had been decided to paint it white (the way you can see it now on my introductory pages) and in my opinion it had lost much of its natural beauty... I experienced the same deep disappointment in Wat Phra Thong on Phuket Island, when the Golden Buddha had been coated with cement.

Next to this Wat Phra Thong there is a small museum with objects, found in the surroundings. Don't forget to visit that too.

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